Comedy Tonight! Barber of Seville!
Plus some additional entertainment resources
I won’t be doing opera explainers so much this week. There are only a couple operas I have much to say about, and the first is a can’t-miss Barber of Seville tonight:
Details on Week 3 of Met Opera free streaming
It looks like many other entertainment venues are offering free streaming videos (more at the end of the post), so the volume on the Met Opera site is less. I had no issue getting over to the site last night.
Here is the list of Week 3 operas from the Met:
Monday, March 30 – Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites
Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring Isabel Leonard, Adrianne Pieczonka, and Karita Mattila. Transmitted live on May 11, 2019.
Tuesday, March 31 – Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Conducted by Maurizio Benini, starring Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez, and Peter Mattei.Transmitted live on March 24, 2007.
Wednesday, April 1 – John Adams’s Nixon in China
Conducted by John Adams, starring Janis Kelly and James Maddalena. Transmitted live on February 12, 2011.
Thursday, April 2 – Verdi’s Don Carlo
Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, starring Marina Poplavskaya, Roberto Alagna, Simon Keenlyside, and Ferruccio Furlanetto. Transmitted live December 11, 2010.
Friday, April 3 – Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles
Conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, starring Diana Damrau, Matthew Polenzani, and Mariusz Kwiecien. Transmitted live January 16, 2016.
Saturday, April 4 – Verdi’s Macbeth
Conducted by Fabio Luisi, starring Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Željko Lučić, and René Pape.Transmitted live October 11, 2014.
Sunday, April 5 – Bellini’s Norma
Conducted by Carlo Rizzi, starring Sondra Radvanovsky, Joyce DiDonato, Joseph Calleja, and Matthew Rose. Transmitted live October 17, 2017.
The Dialogues of the Carmelites is available right now til this afternoon and will switch over to Barber of Seville at 7:30 pm ET.
Once again, there is only one comedic opera in the line-up, so I made a point to cover that one. I may have something to say about Macbeth for the Saturday opera, but I’ve been very tired lately, and opera is not necessarily a priority.
I do recommend going to the Met Opera Live in HD Fans group at Facebook if you’re interested in chatting about MetOpera’s free streams. There are often chat-along posts while the free streams play each evening.
Someone has been keeping a death count by week…. I do hope they have a Mozart week. There are far fewer deaths in Mozart (but still some deaths).
More (Free) Entertainment!
Plenty of venues have been throwing in with free online shows. Let’s take a look at a few places:
NHK World has been running a documentary on the famous director Hayao Miyazaki
Episode 1: Ponyo is Here
This isn’t new — the channel often has free on-demand documentaries and other shows.
Brian May is teaching guitar parts from Queen songs on instagram
A fairly extensive list of places streaming Broadway musicals
And one more opera link: Great Performances on PBS is running a Met Opera I’ve not seen yet: Akhnaton by Philip Glass on Sunday, April 5, at noon ET. I’m looking forward to it!
Fun (for certain values of fun) Corona-parodies
See y’all from the inside!